Bolsonaro and the silent generals – 09/26/2023 – Elio Gaspari

Bolsonaro, with half a dozen palace generals and a few dozen reserve officers, dreamed of a coup. He had the ingredients of other coups, but he lacked the support of a type of inscrutable, silent general.

It is natural to pay attention to the generals who speak. Apart from the fact that they are almost always in their pajamas, or in charge of tables, it is impossible to hear anyone who doesn’t speak.

Like the 1964 coup, Bolsonaro’s coup mobilized a few thousand people, but these demonstrations lacked muscle. When it happened, on January 8, it descended into vandalism.

Like the one in 1968, the coup was plotted in Planalto, with the sympathy of the Minister of Justice. Bolsonaro’s barracks, from the beginning, challenged a legitimate electoral demonstration. This coup was helped by officials who fanned the flames of the contestation of electronic voting machines.

The coup had the ingredients, but it was missing an axis. Above all, it lacked rebel unity. In 1964, for better or worse, General Mourão Filho commanded a military region. Mourão challenged a government that had encouraged military indiscipline. Bolsonaro challenged an electoral result.

Victorious strikes gain support. Failed coups become ridiculous.

In 1984, when Tancredo Neves’ candidacy overrode the government of General João Batista Figueiredo and Paulo Maluf’s candidacy in the Electoral College, there were coup pockets. They were fought at the Army High Command. Who remembers generals Ademar Costa Machado and Jorge de Sá Pinho? In silence, they helped to neutralize the coup plotters and silently went into reserve.

A vignette from that time:

In the second half of 1984, with Tancredo virtually elected, a false propaganda operation was conceived at the Army Information Center. Posters were printed with a red background, an image of Tancredo, a hammer and sickle and the caption “We Will Get There”. Soldiers from the Planalto Military Command, commanded by General Newton Cruz, an icon of the time, mobilized.

The soldiers pasted the posters, the police arrived and took them to a police station. A colonel from the CMP appeared and, with a card, released them. The case exploded in the press, denouncing witchcraft.

In the words of General Newton Cruz:

“At the High Command meeting, shortly afterwards, the commanding general of Rio questioned minister Walter Pires about the case of the wizards, saying that the press was insisting a lot on the subject. Then Pires said: ‘People from my office didn’t go.’ I was at the meeting and I felt a chill down my spine. The head of the CIE was behind him. If it hadn’t been them, then it had been me.”

It was left to Newton Cruz. At the next meeting of the High Command he was passed over for promotion to Army general and was placed in reserve.

Bolsonaro was elected and governed, stretching the ties between society and the Armed Forces. He wasted 30 years of work by military leaders who restored the relationship between the Forces. Before him, the Army was commanded by generals Enzo Peri and Gleuber Vieira. They never said a word. Gleuber, for example, saw everything and said nothing.

Throughout the second half of the last century, only João Goulart and Bolsonaro stretched this rope. One was deposed, the other saw his coup turn into chaos. The thing about silent generals.

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